Playwright, poet, essayist, flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde pack an astonishing amount of work, genius, and controversy into two short decades, producing masterworks in every literary genre. This selection includes almost all of his short stories, including "The Canterville Ghost," "The Fi...

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classicsseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted ext...

In true Faustian tradition The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the tale of a young man who sells his soul to the devil in return for youthful immortality, only to discover that the "devil's bargain" is no bargain at all. "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own so...

These fairy tales, which Oscar Wilde made up for his own sons, include “The Happy Prince,” who was not as happy as he seemed, “The Selfish Giant,” who learned to love little children, and “The Star Child,” who suffered bitter trials when he rejected his parents. Often whimsical and somet...

The Importance of Being Earnest is a glorious comedy of mistaken identity, which ridicules codes of propriety and etiquette. Manners and morality are also victims of Wilde’s sharp wit in Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband, in which snobbery and hypocrisy are lai...

Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something o...

Contains all the Aubrey Beardsley drawings and is the English translation undertaken by Lord Alfred Douglas of Wilde's most brilliant tale of passion, which was originally written in French to avoid (unsuccessfully) Victorian censorship. Salome is a simple tale of complex passion. Wilde's heroine be...

This volume of Keats's powerful poetry follows as closely as possible the chronological order of composition, highlighting autobiographical elements including the young Wilde's conflicting attitudes to Greece and Rome, pagan and Christian, and his fluctuating attraction to Roman Catholicism. The App...

Painter Basil Hallward has done a portrait of a strange subject-youthful Dorian Gray, a man with a mysterious and tangled history. The young man broods on how unfair it is that he will age and his portrait will remain ever young. He wishes with all his might that it were otherwise - and in some biza...

`The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.' `. . .in married life three is company and two is none.' Is this play a `unique work of art' as Oscar Wilde believed? Or, as a first-night reviewer claimed in 1895, it `represents nothing, means nothing, is nothing'? This is for you to decide. . . C...

Oscar Wilde was at once a family man and a homosexual outsider, a socialite, socialist, and Irish nationalist. His contradictions inspired him to ponder the roles and masks donned in conventional society, and his acute and wry insights are wonderfully displayed in this collection of his essential pl...

Three of Wilde’s short stories adapted into enchanting plays for young children The Selfish Giant chases away spring and summer, leaving the garden in a permanent winter. Only when the giant realises his selfishness and opens his garden to the local children does the summer return brin...

Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gr...

The master of wit and irony Published here alongside their evocative original illustrations, these fairy tales, as Oscar Wilde himself explained, were written “partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy.”...

This is Oscar Wilde's long -- and remarkable -- essay on socialism. It's not what you'd think, if you know just a little of his biography. Wilde foresaw -- from his time, long before it'd been tried as a principle of governance -- that socialism was a mistaken approach; he saw the mistakes that'd co...

An extraordinary volume for fans and students Including The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere's Fan, and Salomé, this collection showcases Wilde's brilliance and timeless wit....

Celebrated novel traces the moral degeneration of a handsome young Londoner from an innocent fop into a cruel and reckless pursuer of pleasure and, ultimately, a murderer. As Dorian Gray sinks into depravity, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait reflects the r...

This Norton Critical Edition is the only edition available that includes both the 1890 Lippincott’s and the 1891 book versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, allowing students to compare the two published versions with the editorial guidance of Michael Patrick Gillespie.

When Dorian Gray's portrait is painted it reveals him to be a man of outer beauty. He realizes then that he cannot possibly stay as young as that time. He makes a shocking wish, which comes true. No matter how he behaved, he stayed youthful and his portrait became older and older. Read the tale's...

In addition to writing numerous poems, plays and his famous novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, he wrote his fairy-tale collections, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1892). These two collections are included in this volume and are accompanied by colorful illustrati...

Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something o...

Oscar Wildes enduring masterpiece, this fable of innocence and corruption, purity and decay has become a true classic. The beautiful, narcissistic Dorian Gray, torn between the influence of cynical hedonist Lord Henry Wotton and tortured artist Basil Hallward, sells the beauty of his soul in exchang...

This captivating collection contains all nine of Wilde's charming, sensitive stories for young readers. Included are "The Happy Prince," a tale of a young nobleman who in his lifetime sought only pleasure, but in death, as a gold-encrusted statue, provides aid to the needy; "The Selfish Giant," i...

Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gra...

Dorian is a good-natured young man until he falls in with the cunning and quick-tongued Lord Henry, who unveils to Dorian the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deeper into a glamorous and decadent world of selfish luxury, he seems to remain physically unchan...

Ranging from fairy tales to detective yarns, this collection showcases Wilde's brilliant storytelling skills and stylistic versatility. Contents include the complete texts of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," "A House of Pomegranates," "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," "Poems in...

A new Marvel Illustrated epic! Painter Basil Hallward has done a portrait of a strange subject - youthful Dorian Gray, a man with a mysterious and tangled history. The young man broods on how unfair it is that he will age and his portrait will remain ever young. He wishes with all his might that it ...

Dorian Gray is a handsome young man who falls in with a group of friends whose amoral philosophies he finds quite appealing. After he has his portrait painted, his frivolity and general demeanor degenerate into wickedness, but only the portrait bears the effects of his descent into decadence and ser...

The text of this Norton Critical Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest is the established three-act version. Originally in four acts, Wilde shortened it to three at the urging of George Alexander, the owner of the St. James Theatre and first actor to play Jack Worthing. T...

A terrifying ghost is haunting the ancient mansion of Canterville Chase, complete with creaking floorboards, clanking chains and gruesome disguises - but the new occupants seem strangely undisturbed by his presence. Deftly contrasting the conventional gothic ghost story with the pragmatism of the mo...

New Mermaids are modernized and fully-annotated editions of classic English plays. Each volume includes:• The playtext, in modern spelling, edited to the highest bibliographical and textual standards• Textual notes recording significant changes to the copytext and variant readings• Glos...

When first published, The Picture of Dorian Gray was regarded as dangerously modern in its portrayal of fashionable fin de siecle decadence. In Wilde's updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton, who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel or conscienc...

'My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's' Lady Windermere has a happy marriage - or, at least, that's what she believes until one of London society's gossips, the Duchess of Berwick, arrives with her daughter to voice her suspicions about an affair Lord Windermere appears ...

In the library of a country house, Vivian writes an article about the importance of lying until he is interrupted by Cyril, who tries to tempt him away. Instead the two men are plunged into a discussion about art, nature, literature, and imagination. Set in the fo...